Santi Taboada
The Vatican Museums house more than 70,000 works of art, spread across galleries stretching for several miles. Every day, 25,000 visitors walk their halls.
Those thousands of tourists pay an average admission fee of 20 euros. That means the museums bring in between 200,000 and 300,000 euros a day, or roughly 100 million euros a year. That enormous sum accounts for half of the Vatican City State’s revenue.
But the Vatican Museums don't keep the money they generate. Instead, it helps cover the expenses of the entire Vatican State. So it becomes necessary to find other sources of funding to pay for the costly restoration of its priceless works of art.
That is the mission of the Office for Relations with Patrons of the Arts, headed by Monsignor Terence Hogan.
MONS. TERENCE HOGAN
Coordinator of the Office for Relations with Patrons of the Arts in the Vatican Museums
Many years ago Pope St. John Paul II, said,"Now we need to restore all the art that we have." The reason being. The people who come in, the tickets that people purchased to come into the museum, that money goes for the support of the entire Vatican City State, for all the people who work here, for all the buildings and everything that's involved.
Today, the Patrons help fund the restoration of works in the Vatican Museums.
The process is simple: every year, the director of the Museums meets with the art curators from the 17 museums that make up the Vatican Museums. Together, they identify which works are most in need of restoration.
Based on that assessment, Hogan’s office puts together a catalog of the works most urgently in need of restoration, and makes it available to the public.
MONS. TERENCE HOGAN
Coordinator “Patrons of the Arts in the Vatican Museums”
We give them one day. One hour. And we send out all the projects during that one hour and we let them know when that one hour is going to be And it's almost like voting. Whoever gets to email us first they win the project, as it were. It's very interesting, but we have to do that because those projects... We have so many donors, and they really want many, many of these projects. So we don't tell them before the actual wishbook is opened up to the public.
The catalog features around 20 projects of all kinds, from across the Vatican Museums. Some require thousands of euros, while others cost millions.
The Patrons have funded everything from restorations of the Sistine Chapel and the Apostolic Palace to the museums’ air-conditioning system, which is essential to preserving the works of art.
But who is the typical donor?
MONS. TERENCE HOGAN
Coordinator “Patrons of the Arts in the Vatican Museums”
It's a very interesting mix of people.
but they're from all around the world and the common denominator seems to be art and faith.
I always call them friends. They are friends of the Vatican Museum, they're the patrons, you know, they have a fatherly, a motherly care for all this art.
The Patrons of the Arts have raised a seven-figure sum, covering most of the funding needed to restore the Museums.
